Why April 4, 2018 might go down as a pivotal day in the sports media business...

Yesterday may have seemed like just any other day on the sports calendar. The NCAA Tournament handed the "talking head" baton to the Masters. Basketball and hockey playoff and lottery pick jockeying was in its final throes. And, of course, the NFL rumor wire wiped back and forth across our windshields. Just another early April day. Or was it? Major League Baseball and the NBA made landmark moves that will have long term effects on the industry.

MLB and Facebook Live partnered to bring fans an early season Mets-Phillies day game. This platform was tested in 2017 but the big difference is that, for the first time, there were no other options to watch the game. That's right, no local or national broadcast television. This was the first of 25 such regular season games this season. The commitment by MLB to new distribution vehicles isn't new. In fact, their foresight to form Major League Baseball Advance Media in 2000 (that's right 18 years ago!), helped the league establish their digital streaming presence. Last year, they even parlayed it into a cool $1 billion minority investment from Disney to solve the streaming challenge for the worldwide leader in sports.

Now, the league is looking to Facebook and other social media platforms to help widen and presumably youngen (new adjective) their audience. Inviting the New York and Philadelphia fans bases into the petri dish is a pretty bold move and the presentation wasn't universally praised (https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2018/04/04/facebook-watch-mlb-phillies-mets-broadcast/488430002/) but, rest assured, this is no experiment or overt money grab. Consumers are now mobile and social first so it is only logical to take the game to them.

Those who had trouble wrapping their heads around a Facebook streamed baseball game are really going to struggle with this one..."It’s something that we’re going to develop over a very long time, and we’re building this league as something that’s going to be around forever.” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver as he launched their "fourth league", the NBA 2K League (https://www.cynopsis.com/040518-the-nba-2k-league-tipped-off-with-the-leagues-first-draft-on-wednesday/). That's right, gamers are now pro athletes.

You know who won't struggle with this concept? Sports fans in the coveted 18-34 demo. Throw in a few million younger teens and you have an avid built in base. Fittingly, Cleveland native, Artreyo "Dimez" Boyd, who has been compared to LeBron James, made history as the first ever player picked in the NBA 2K Draft. Dimez might just be a household name soon. The NBA is a progressive forward-thinking entity and their commitment to this growing platform (remember Twitch's $1 billion exit 4 years ago?) validates an entire new audience that will soon be the dominant demographic.

While audience fragmentation and skinny bundles own the industry headlines right now, someday we might look back on a quiet early April day in 2018 as the first page in a new chapter in the history of sports programming.